Mass Effect: Uprising
by JLake4
Summary: The Crucible left a shattered galaxy, and no species was broken down like the batarians. Those the Hegemony left behind were hardened by war and determined not to let the Hegemony return, and this is the story of their fight.
1. Prologue: The Last Month

_A/N:_

_Welcome to a story that's kind of dwelt in my mind for a while. It came to me as I read a book by the pool and it started to rain pretty heavily. I ran back into the house and prompted by the heavy rain hitting the leaves and that noise started to think about muggy Khar'shan and the batarian contribution to the Reaper War. So I spent a few days writing this chapter and tweaking it, doing a little headcanon creation as far as the Hegemony is concerned. _

_Anyway, I like it. If you do, let me know. Reviews are definitely appreciated!_

_Thanks as always,_

_JLake4_

* * *

**24 August 2186**

**Kite's Nest | Harsa System | Khar'shan | Apretok Nation | Idharem Valley**

**Losrak Vakdeba  
**

The roiling black clouds concealed the reapers moving through them to their next target, a decoy encampment made of slaves told to wait until their masters' return. Word passed deliberately to known indoctrinated agents and the real forces waited in an ambush a kilometer away.

As they looked on, red light began to discharge from the shapes like lightning, illuminating for just a fraction of a second the strange teardrop shape of a reaper as it made for its target.

"Look," the Hegemony's appointed leader of the operation, Nigeto Rog'nohon, whispered, pointing a thick finger to the sky. A reaper destroyer descended from the building storm, hitting the ground and causing the foliage to shudder momentarily with the impact. Heavy drops of water spilled from the leaves and onto the body armor of the two dozen batarians crouched there.

Screams drifted to them on the hillside as the slaves were slaughtered by batarians who turned to the reapers and were perverted by their machinery. The screaming reached an awful crescendo before it began to be replaced by the roars of the traitorous cannibals.

"Shall we go?" one of Rog'nohon's men, Losrak Vakdeba, asked. The younger batarian measured half the size of his superior, his growth stunted by a childhood of malnutrition and cruel treatment at the hands of his master. He hid his background as a slave and invented a story about being burned by an incendiary device lobbed by a reaper to cover his painful removal of his implant. The Hegemony accepted this, and shortly before the capital city fell assigned him to Rog'nohon's command.

"No, they aren't inside the compound yet," Rog'nohon replied, squinting all four eyes at the target camp.

"Every second we wait sees the birth of more of those monsters," Losrak countered. _Not to mention the deaths of more of our people_, he didn't add.

"Do not overstep your boundaries, _chakgot_," Rog'nohon warned, nodding his head to the right and adding the name of Losrak's lower caste as an insult. "We shall wait here until the reapers are fully distracted."

Losrak swallowed his objections and forced himself to look away from the upper caste _cerk_. _Cerk_ owned slaves or property, and occupied one of the higher castes in the Hegemony. They could be identified easily, as they usually weighed much more than any chakgot or certainly any _safk_, or slave.

In the valley, an ugly bulbous machine resembling a beetle joined the destroyer. The batarians recognized it as a processing ship, called to begin turning their targets into cannibals. Two hundred slaves had been used as bait, and only twice as many soldiers lay in wait around the trap. Four hundred soldiers held in check by one man: Rog'nohon.

After nearly half an hour the processor took off into the air, discharging massive amounts of red lightning into the clouds, which coincidentally or not began to pour rain down on the waiting batarians. The destroyer remained, guarding the site.

"Now we go," Rog'nohon said, broadcasting his order on the Hegemony Army intranet via the omnitools 'created' by government scientists. Across the jungle valley soldiers rose from their hiding places and began an advance on the destroyer, crashing through foliage and swampy terrain at the bottom of the valley and charging thermal clips into their assault rifles.

The most important equipment in their possession came in the form of an M920 Cain stolen from some Alliance world during a slave raid. To the batarians now carrying it behind Losrak and Rog'nohon the weapon's origin story bore little importance. Every one of their eyes was fixed on the massive machine standing before them.

At the halfway mark the monster roared the terrible but familiar metallic trill of the reapers. Its facade seemed to come apart in several directions revealing a great red eye that stared down at the attacking force.

It roared again before opening fire, burning great swaths through the jungle and the attackers all at once with a piercing red beam. A forest fire sprang up at once, fragmenting the batarian advance and sending large units fleeing into the mountains.

Losrak took the Cain gunners forward behind a rocky outcrop along a jungle creek. "Fire on the eye!" he shouted over the din of the battle. The destroyer's foot landed scarcely a few meters away, throwing one of the two young batarians to the ground. He dove after the young one, dragging him to his feet and yelling, "Get to your feet, boy! Fight for Khar'shan!"

The two batarian gunners took aim and fired. A projectile arced through the air, leaving a smoky trail behind it, and smashed into the reaper destroyer. The explosion blinded those watching it temporarily, so at first no one could tell if they scored a fatal blow.

A frantic step by the destroyer shattered the rocks they used for cover, sending Losrak and the gunners retreating behind the creek. They were met with the barrel of Rog'nohon's pistol, leveled at their heads. "No retreat!" the _cerk_ shouted. "Get back into the fight, cowards!"

Losrak stared incredulously at the batarian pointing his gun at them and blinked. "We have no cover!"

"Then take it from the enemy!" Rog'nohon shouted back, gesturing with the pistol to emphasize his point.

Losrak grabbed the other two batarians and pressed his pistol into the hand of one and ordered the second to drop the Cain on this bank of the river for recovery later. "Let's go!" he yelled, casting one final baleful look at Rog'nohon before turning and running across the creek.

The destroyer tumbled and slammed into the ground perpendicular to the decoy camp, sending shockwaves through the dirt and the charging batarians. Two more joined Losrak as he advanced on a low rise that the destroyer had rendered black with its beam.

They hit the ground in unison, each taking a moment to catch his breath before checking his weapon and crawling toward the crest of the hill.

Upon reaching the crest, Losrak looked down into the camp and recoiled with horror at the sight. Hundreds of perverted batarians formed in the center of the camp, scanning for the source of the round that felled the destroyer with sickly bright blue eyes. They projected some kind of electronic light and uttered moans that terrified the surviving soldiers.

"How many?" one of the young gunners asked, nervously eying the pistol that Losrak had shoved into his hands moments earlier.

Before Losrak could respond, a metal-infused grey hand reached over the hill and closed like a vice upon the shoulder of one of the other batarians, dragging him toward the base. The four others backed down the hill, breaking and running. As a mercy Losrak turned and killed the captured batarian before he could be turned, thus denying the reapers another soldier.

Behind them dozens of cannibals raced over the hill, firing at the retreating batarians all the way. Losrak stopped at the creek again, taking stock of his situation. Two batarians survived alongside him, and Rog'nohon was nowhere to be seen.

"Into the jungle!" Losrak shouted, pulling the other two with him into the water and up the slope onto the far end of the creek. The three of them immediately disappeared into heavy foliage. They were torn at by thorn bushes and hindered by vines and mushy terrain.

They picked up on a trail, though. Someone had crashed through this section of jungle before them, and Losrak had a good idea of who it did it. He began to follow the path already paved for them, trailing the two other batarians behind.

Cannibals roared in frustration in the distance, barely audible over the rain crashing through the canopy of the jungle. Three steady sets of footfalls broke the song of the rainfall, splashing through the mud in their pursuit.

Sure enough, in a clearing they came face to face with the fat _cerk_ Rog'nohon himself. He leaned against a tree trunk, wheezing.

Drenched, Losrak burst from the foliage flanked by the other two batarians. Rog'nohon turned to face him, shakily raising a pistol. "Why… have you abandoned… the fight?"

Losrak replied by advancing and confronting the _cerk_. "_You_ abandoned the fight. You abandoned Khar'shan. You abandoned the batarian people!"

Rog'nohon attempted to laugh but instead began coughing uncontrollably, the hand holding the pistol gravitating toward his knees to support his upper body. Losrak took the opportunity to disarm his foe, throwing the pistol to one of his comrades.

"You'll… burn for this," Rog'nohon said, sensing what was about to happen. "You will… be branded… a traitor to the Hegemony."

Losrak bared his mouthful of sharp teeth, grinning. He fired a single shot into the _cerk_, killing him instantly.

"The Hegemony is dead."


	2. A New Beginning

**12 September 2186**

**Kite's Nest | Harsa System | Khar'shan | Apretok Nation | Rato Mountains**

**Losrak Vakdeba  
**

* * *

The rains began again in earnest as the sun set, leaving the resistance camp in total blackness. Their encampment existed on a foliage-choked outcrop on the side of a mountain with a view of the entire Idharem jungle and valley, now decorated with the scars of the battle from several weeks ago. One could almost see the miniscule blue lights of the cannibals' eyes patrolling the decoy camp several kilometers away.

Losrak stood on the edge of the forest, no more than two meters from the edge of the cliff and a four hundred meter drop. He watched the rain fall, blowing this way and that all the way to the ground. Specifically, he watched a small mound of dirt erected by some insect as it was washed away part by part after every impact of a raindrop.

Yesterday they'd executed their first attack on a solely Hegemony target. Until that point, they'd restricted any anti-Hegemony operations to killing the inept officers during attacks on reaper targets.

Seventeen _safk_ got pulled from barbaric conditions at the Hegemony camp, and their chips were promptly removed so the Hegemony couldn't track them down.

A sudden flash of lightning occurred, followed momentarily by a deafening crash of thunder when behind him a voice spoke out, hesitant and quiet. He could tell from these traits its owner could only be a newly-liberated _safk_. "Captain Losrak?"

Losrak turned to see a short female batarian wearing little more than rags standing at the tree line. "You can dispense with the titles; here we're no longer part of the caste system. What is it?"

The young girl still averted all four eyes, staring intently at the ground half a meter before Losrak's feet. When she spoke, the sound melded with the rainfall to the point Losrak could barely hear her. "Why did you free us?"

Losrak offered a smile, but remembered the girl wouldn't look at him. He sighed and asked, "Can you keep a secret?"

The little girl nodded emphatically, but did not speak.

"I was once a _safk_ too," Losrak said, turning and pointing to the burn at the base of his skull. He caught the girl stealing a glance at it as he turned back to face her. "I know better than most what the average batarian goes through. While the Hegemony sat in their palaces and planned their next war against their fellow batarian, I worked in a mine to support them. When I did not mine enough metal, I was beaten savagely until I promised to work harder next time. I witnessed other _safk_ who broke their arms or legs being taken aside and shot because they could no longer labor for the Hegemony. The way they treat us is wrong. When the reapers attacked I saw a chance to escape and took it, and while the reapers are a threat to our very existence, the Hegemony is a threat to our soul as a people. They work together to kill us off, how else could they have gotten to Khar'shan through our military? As the reapers must die, so must the Hegemony."

"But they are our masters, they feed us and give us shelter! We're living in the jungles now," the girl countered.

"We are destined to be our own masters, I think," Losrak replied.

"How can we do that?" the girl asked, already showing the loss of the tendency to defer beat into every _safk_.

"Just like this. Ask questions, gain knowledge, and execute the decisions right for you," Losrak said. "We will all help each other. The savagery of the Hegemony has bred into us a camaraderie that will never break."

"I've seen so many people broken, I don't know if I can believe you," she said quietly, her voice getting lost among the sounds of the rainfall again.

"I understand. It's for people like you that I fight," Losrak said. "I see your downcast eyes and feeble bodies and am filled with anger at the monsters who have done this to their own."

"It's our place," the girl said, falling back into the old way of thinking. "It's what we were born to do."

"No," Losrak said. "I was not born to work in a mine. I was born to topple the Hegemony and bring freedom to the batarian people. I don't know what your masters made you do, but look behind me. In that valley was a camp the Hegemony trapped two hundred living, breathing, thinking people. They used them as bait for the reapers, and let them all die before doing anything. When they finally acted, the bait had been turned into monsters that fought against the soldiers springing the trap. Were those _safk_ born to become reaper monstrosities? No, I refuse to believe that. You are what you make yourself to be."

The girl seemed to digest this, glancing up in Losrak's direction. He realized that her eyes focused on something behind him, though. He glanced at the sky in time to see light building above the clouds and turned to the girl. "Get back into the woods!"

The red light continued to grow in strength as they retreated to the wood line. Losrak expected now for a reaper to fall from the sky, somehow having found them. Someone must have transmitted something they picked up on, or perhaps one of the group was indoctrinated somehow….

There was no trill, however. No terrifying call or ground-shaking impact of the reaper touching down. The two batarians emerged from the woods just in time to see the red light wash down in a wave from the clouds, illuminating the night until it seemed like day seen through a red filter. The wave hit them, washing over their drenched bodies but leaving no tangible evidence of its passing.

Like that the wave hit the ground and disappeared, leaving those who witnessed it unable to see in the dark night for a few seconds. Losrak blinked several times and his sight returned, though it failed to clear up any of the mystery of that red wave.

Another resistance fighter burst through the foliage behind them, asking, "What was that? Is it a reaper?"

Losrak turned to face him. "I don't know what it was. Some kind of light wave, or something," he said, confusion evident in his body language.

"A light wave?" the other batarian, Dhorvan, asked.

"I can't think of another way to describe it," Losrak admitted. He turned back to the valley to see if there was any sign of what had just happened and found none.

Before Dhorvan replied, someone called from the camp. Dhorvan and Losrak exchanged worried glances and pushed through the foliage, keeping the girl safely behind them as they went. The trees here fought for every inch of space on this cliff, and as a result the the foliage overlapped and twisted and melded together and had long ago become impassable. They found their way, though, after a short few minutes.

They emerged into the camp that was built among the roots of the jungle trees and found the rest of the batarians huddled around the radio they used to communicate with the other resistance groups in the Apretok nation.

"Losrak, listen, it's ending!" the operator of the radio, Khosk, said. Losrak rushed to his side and listened to the broadcast.

"...it just fell over! Something in the light killed it," the batarian on the other end said.

"What fell over?" Losrak asked the radio.

"The reaper! A destroyer just collapsed after being hit by the light!" whoever was on the other end of the radio replied.

A new voice chimed in. "We're in the Capital City, we saw one of the big ones go down too- it was mid-flight. The light hit it and it just went straight down into the swamps."

Dhorvan came up beside Losrak and asked, "Is this what happened everywhere?"

"From what we're getting, yes it is," Khosk replied.

"I think it's over," Losrak said, straightening up. The camp erupted into cheers at this pronouncement, with genuine smiles on everyone's faces for the first time in a very long time.

"We've won!" Dhorvan shouted, raising both fists into the air.

Losrak smiled as well, though he didn't believe Dhorvan. He was savvy enough to know not to trample this moment, but the war wasn't over. Half of their foes were vanquished, the other half still lived. He just hoped that the fight wasn't out of his friends here. They had a long way to go before Khar'shan would be free.


	3. A Changing of the Guard

**30 September 2186**

**Kite's Nest | Harsa System | Khar'shan | Apretok Nation | Capital City**

**Losrak Vakdeba**

* * *

Every batarian called it "Capital City", save for when in the presence of a Hegemony official. The current leader of the Hegemony would often change the name to match his own, and it switched so frequently that people stopped bothering with it.

Not much remained of Capital City. The reapers took their toll, and when that great red wave washed down through the sky, they exploded and took another toll the reapers hadn't foreseen. Massive pieces of debris littered the planet and low orbit around it, making reconstruction a daunting prospect.

The resistance group from Idharem valley arrived at the gates of the city, though they hardly closed in anything- the grey walls that hemmed in the City in days past laid strewn about the ground, thrown meters away by explosions. At the gate several batarians in red armor stood guard, pointing their weapons down the road at the new arrivals.

"Who are you?" one of the batarians shouted down to them. He stood atop a scaffold built inside the gate.

"Resistance fighters from the Idharem valley," Losrak replied. The rain stopped falling several hours ago, but the thirty of them still clutched tattered blankets and pieces of tents around their heads and shoulders like shawls to protect them from sudden, vicious cloudbursts. Mud covered them from the waist down, chafing their skin and making the march to the City torturous.

"Idharem? We've lost a lot of officers out there. They say there's a terrorist group operating out of the valley. Do you know anything about that?" the second gate guard asked. They still aimed directly at the group, their fingers on the triggers.

_Hegemony men_, Losrak thought. _They still control the City… damn them_.

"No, we don't. We heard those rumors too," one of the new arrivals replied.

Losrak turned to face the speaker, one of the two batarians to witness his murder of Captain Rog'nohon. His name was Dhemak, and he proved to be an able warrior in the past month. The irony of him denying the rumors of Hegemony slayings in the valley almost brought a grin to Losrak's weather-beaten face.

"Alright. There are camps throughout the City, find a home in one of those. Welcome home," the first gate guard said. They finally lowered their weapons and beckoned for the company of travelers to come forward. Losrak and Dhemak led the group forward, watching the gate guards every step of the way.

After passing through the gates they found that the only the reapers stood taller than two stories- nothing survived the reapers' wrath. They made their way along shattered boulevards and twisted piles of rebar and concrete on their way deeper into the City. Really they had no goal except for to find someplace to call home.

The whole world seemed monochrome between the grey sky, grey concrete, grey rubble, and blackened craters in the road. The broken walls and windows of the place seemed haunted with the millions of lives the reapers stole. After the gate guards, the group saw no one alive.

Returning sparked a mixture of memories for Losrak. As he walked on he remembered the only other times he'd seen the City as times his master led him in or ordered him to go. To be here and free was different, not only for the obvious reasons.

Before he could reflect too long, Sathor, the other witness to Rog'nohon's murder, pointed to the horizon. Several tendrils of black smoke twirled into the sky from some place off to the right. They changed course and began to scale the rubble in the direction of the smoke.

After an arduous hike across mounds of rubble, the group arrived at a Hegemony-controlled camp established in what appeared to have been a park in a past life. Blackened tree trunks dotted an ugly brown field of mud atop which several tents stood. As they approached, Losrak counted seventy or so batarians in the camp.

"Halt," a red-clad guard ordered, moving to bar the group's entry to the camp. "What are you?"

It took Losrak a moment to register the question. This fool really asked about their caste after all that had happened. "_Chakgot_. We're all _chakgot_," he replied.

The wind gusted briefly as the guard considered this. "Alright, go inside. _Chakgot_ sleep to the right. Watch out over on the left, that's where the _cerk_ keep their _safk_."

"Thank you," Losrak said, restraining his disgust. He led the others into the camp, noting with astonishment that twenty or so _safk_ laid in the mud on the opposite end of the park. It dawned on him that he'd gotten incredibly lucky to get freed by the reapers' attack. Some still lived under their masters' yoke.

The _chakgot_ section, too, sported little furniture. Forty batarians called this place home, but no tents stood and no fires burned- those the _cerk_ held a monopoly over. They refused the right to stay warm and dry to the _chakgot_ for some reason.

Losrak and company refused to play that game. They staked a claim in the corner of the park and began to erect their tents. These tents survived the Idharem campaign, and to the batarians who had nothing they truly had become home.

Predictably, though, two guards came running over to them. "You can't build those here," one said. The other merely nodded agreement.

"Why not?" Losrak asked, turning to face the guards. The wind swirled his cloak about him, revealing the muddy weapon he'd strapped around his back.

The first guard noticed it right away and said, "Don't get any bright ideas. The _cerk _ordered us not to allow it."

Losrak couldn't help but scoff. "For what reason?"

"You dare to question your superior?" the second guard said, stepping forward and drawing his pistol. That sort of social insubordination would ordinarily earn Losrak a summary execution if twenty-nine of his comrades hadn't been standing behind him.

Dhemak stepped forward with his own rifle drawn and rammed it into the second guard's chest, stopping him cold. "You don't want to do that. Put the gun down."

Four more guards sprinted across the park, weapons drawn, to the scene. Sathor's sniper rifle came sailing out from below his shawl, which the wind took and threw into a half-pitched tent. Several other batarians of the resistance group drew their own weapons, leaving the guards greatly outnumbered.

"You don't get it, do you? The old ways must die for our species to live," Losrak said. "I dare to question the fat varren on the hilltop. They have no reason to restrict our construction of tents or fire pits, let alone the right to make that proclamation."

"They are given that right by birth," the first guard said.

"I say we are given the same rights at birth," Losrak countered.

The guard spat at Losrak's feet before replying, "Idiot."

Dhemak offered his own reply in the form of a savage shot to the gut from the butt of his rifle that sent the guard to his knees, coughing and sputtering in the mud. "Show a little respect!"

Losrak met the guard's eyes and said very calmly, "I have come from the field of battle, upon which I saw the Hegemony waste countless lives with inept leaders and senseless strategies. I look at you, a soldier of the Hegemony, and can only offer you two choices. Take up arms with us, the batarian people, or be swept up in our uprising. We've been given a second chance as a people, and you will not stand in our way."

The guard didn't reply at first, and neither did his three compatriots.

"In short, join us or die," Sathor said from behind Dhemak and Losrak.

"The Fleet will return any day now and reinforce us. Your pitiful revolution will be short-lived indeed," the second guard said. His head exploded as Sathor fired a round at almost point-blank range, turning the heads of every batarian in the camp and bringing the remainder of the guards running.

The other three guards exchanged glances with each other and turned to face the barrels of almost thirty guns. "We won't fight you. Build your tents."

"This isn't about the tents!" Losrak shouted. The camp's _cerk _looked at the scene from their section of the camp, cocking their heads curiously. They seemed wholly unconcerned with the killing of one of their guards.

"What is it about?" the guard asked, seemingly genuinely confused.

"We're changing things. You're with us or you're with them," Losrak said, nodding to the _cerk_.

"They don't even care that your friend here died," Sathor said. "They won't care until one or two more of you get picked off. Until they feel threatened, I mean."

The number of guards now swelled to nine, though the six late arrivals seemed totally confused. Their weapons pointed uncertainly towards the ground. "What's going on here?" one asked. He looked at the body of his fallen comrade and added, "What is the meaning of this?"

Losrak looked up at him. "Your friends are learning a lesson in civics. 'Give the people what they want'. The people want shelter."

The guard scoffed. "Who cares what you want?"

"I do," Dhemak said. "I've got a rifle that cares what I want, too, so laugh at _me._ I dare you."

"I think we all do," Sathor said. "We all want the same thing."

The guards looked at each other, knowing that they couldn't win a fight with the new arrivals. They remained silent, and an awkward veil of silence fell over the camp as everyone watched to see what unfolded.

Losrak could see something in their eyes, though. Something that told him they could be swayed. "Are you not tired of kowtowing to the whims of someone who doesn't value your life? Your friend was just killed and they sit watching like this is a vid! They sit on their hill and act like this is pre-War, but it's a new world. The world of the people, liberated by the reapers and united through combat. We can fight, and we will fight, for our future. You can obstruct us or you can join us."

The first guard looked up at the _cerk_ before looking back at the haggard survivors. "I'm with them."

The other guards blinked and looked at him incredulously. "Are you crazy? They kill Passhk!" one asked.

"No, I think we were all crazy. They aren't even _cerk_ anymore because their assets were destroyed by the reapers," the guard said.

The other guards didn't seem to have considered this, and thought on the development. "That makes sense," one of the other guards said. "They may not even really be _cerk_, just imposters claiming to be _cerk_."

The guards moved away and talked among themselves for several minutes. Losrak gave them space, directing his men to lower their weapons.

A guard captain adorning red armor with gold trim on its edges returned to the group, whispering, "We're with you. What do we do?"

"Do what you would normally do. Sathor will accompany you back to the guardhouse so the _cerk_ think you've caught the killer. I'll come to you with a plan to move to a new camp tomorrow, okay?"

"Yes, fine," the guard said.

"What's your name?" Losrak asked.

"Korvan Dron'cacan," the guard captain said over his shoulder as he walked away. "I'll be at the front entrance."

"Welcome to the movement," Losrak said, turning to help his people build their tents.

* * *

_A/N:_

_The feedback so far has been great, and I want to thank you all for reading again. I also want to give a shout out to Lady Amiee for reading through Chapter 3 and helping me out. _

_Thanks!_

_JLake4_


End file.
